Chapter 2

Ten-Year Check-Up: Have Federal Agencies Responded to Civil Rights Recommendations?

A review of the Commission’s 16 volumes of enforcement reports written over the past decade revealed that the Commission had set broad civil rights goals as well as others more narrowly focused on achieving a more effective federal system of civil rights enforcement. Establishing equal treatment of all parties was among broad civil rights goals the Commission asked federal agencies to pursue in their civil rights enforcement efforts.[1] Still other Commission recommendations encouraged federal agencies to interpret how civil rights laws apply to their specialized programs. This chapter addresses the themes embodied in the Commission’s recommendations to all agencies, despite any unique aspects of the programs they operate.

The subject matter of recommendations fell in several categories: the priority given to civil rights enforcement; the dissemination of policy through guidance, regulations, technical assistance, outreach, education, and publicity; the complaint processing and litigation system; the compliance review system for funding recipients; and certain managerial aspects such as staff training and coordination with other agencies.

One-third of the Commission’s more than 1,100 recommendations pertained to policy dissemination. Roughly 20 to 25 percent of the recommendations related to the priority of civil rights enforcement.[2] About 12 percent of the recommendations dealt with the system of ensuring compliance among funding recipients. Recommendations about complaint processing made up 7 percent. Recommendations about substantive issues such as limited English proficiency or diversity accounted for 4 to 6 percent. Together, recommendations about staff training, coordination, and interaction with other federal agencies, advocacy groups, and community organizations, and the need for additional research on substantive areas of enforcement were 12 percent of the whole. Finally, 8 percent of the recommendations were directed at organizations other than federal agencies (e.g., professional associations and advocacy groups) or dealt with unique matters not readily categorized here and are not included in the summary that follows.

In prior studies of federal agencies, the Commission often found a lack of commitment to civil rights enforcement, which was evident in the failure to issue policy guidance and to conduct compliance reviews.[3] It repeatedly recommended renewing commitment to, or revitalizing, civil rights compliance and enforcement programs, whether they were concerned with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or another civil rights law. In numerous instances, the Commission indicated that any revitalization of one aspect of enforcement should not occur at the expense of other civil rights programs. Agencies should seek ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of civil rights enforcement, possibly even by consolidating efforts with other federal agencies.[4] The Commission also asked that civil rights enforcement activities be integrated into the activities of all other agency offices to ensure that civil rights goals and objectives would be met.[5]

Apart from this general complacency about civil rights enforcement, the priority given to it is expressed in the lack of vigor with which agencies seek funds and how they allocate them to enforcement functions; the organization and line of authority for civil rights staff within agencies; the formal establishment of procedures for accountability and oversight of civil rights enforcement; agencies’ strategic planning to accomplish civil rights goals and objectives; and the management of enforcement through tracking of civil rights activities. All of these are important; however, the need for additional funding and resources devoted to civil rights enforcement is the most prevalent recommendation with respect to the priority of civil rights.

Nearly 10 percent of the Commission’s recommendations to agencies between 1992 and 2000 sought to increase funding and resources.[6] In some instances, the need for more funding arose because new statutes had expanded agencies’ civil rights jurisdictions.[7] In other instances, the Commission recommended that Congress provide more funds for specific enforcement functions (e.g., for litigation or mediation,[8] outreach,[9] and improved computer technology to support civil rights enforcement[10]) or for social programs designed to address particular civil rights issues.[11]

Similarly, many recommendations suggested that agency officials request more funds from Congress or allocate more of the agency resources, either funding or staff, to civil rights enforcement.[12] Recommendations encouraged agency officials, including the U.S. attorney general and departmental secretaries, to request or allocate more resources for or to specific civil rights enforcement activities.[13]

The Commission also found need for additional staff. Some departments had only implemented effective Title VI enforcement within some administrations or programs and needed more civil rights staff to expand these efforts throughout the entire agency.[14] Additional staff was recommended for many activities related to civil rights enforcement. Among these were developing civil rights enforcement plans and Title VI regulations, guidelines, policies, and procedures;[15] conducting pre- and post-award compliance reviews and complaint investigations; coordinating regional and states’ civil rights enforcement activities;[16] collecting and analyzing data on program participants or beneficiaries;[17] providing community outreach, public education, and Title VI staff training;[18] and conducting social science research on issues concerning women and minorities.[19]

Agencies were asked to develop an inventory of the functions and activities needed to sustain civil rights enforcement and to focus on the deficiencies in the overall enforcement program when identifying areas that need staff increases.[20] However, because assigning additional staff to civil rights enforcement is often unfeasible, the Commission often recommended that staff be reallocated for greater effectiveness of civil rights enforcement activities or that more efficient methods of enforcing civil rights be found.[21] For example, among the Title VI enforcement activities the Commission viewed as more efficient were the following: conducting pre-award desk audits of funding recipients’ civil rights compliance, which might prevent an agency from awarding funds to a discriminating organization; providing technical assistance to aid recipients in complying; requiring recipients to conduct self-evaluations as part of their grant or contract obligations; and delegating implementation and enforcement activities to states for state-administered assistance programs, so that the federal agency was responsible only for oversight and monitoring.[22] In some instances, the Commission recommended that a study be done to identify the enforcement activities that most needed additional resources or that proved most effective for achieving civil rights goals.[23]

The Commission has been concerned about whether federal agencies have organizational structures that foster effective civil rights enforcement.[24] It recommended that civil rights enforcement be integrated into all parts of an agency.[25] Yet how federal agencies achieved this integration differed. The Commission’s studies of federal enforcement revealed three distinct structures, which will be referred to as the “centralized,” “oversight,” and “decentralized” models (see figure 1). In the centralized model, agencies have headquarters civil rights offices that conduct all civil rights enforcement activities.[26] In the oversight model, agencies have a headquarters office directing civil rights enforcement, while regional or local offices conduct most of the day-to-day enforcement activities.[27] The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) fit this model. In the decentralized model, federal agencies have delegated most of the responsibility for civil rights enforcement to operating administrations.[28] The Department of Agriculture has decentralized civil rights enforcement.

Civil rights responsibilities are carried out under each of the models with varying degrees of success. The Commission identified several key elements that must be achieved with each model in order for Title VI implementation, compliance, and enforcement to be effective. These are discussed below. Notably, only one of the federal agencies reviewed in the Commission’s Title VI report—the Department of Education (DOEd)—had an organizational structure meeting all of the elements the Commission identified.[29] The Commission commended EEOC for its organizational structure, too.[30]

The first element to foster civil rights enforcement is a primary civil rights office organizationally placed to ensure primacy within the agency.[31] One way to achieve this primacy is for the civil rights unit to have a direct line of authority to the departmental Secretary or the agency head.[32] The Commission recommended organizational changes to have the head of the Department’s Office for Civil Rights report directly to the Secretary in the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Labor (DOL), and Department of the Interior (DOI).[33] Within various administrations of the Department of Transportation (DOT) and USDA, the Commission recommended that organizational charts be revised so that the directors of the offices of civil rights report directly to their respective administrators.[34] Further, all staff engaged in civil rights enforcement, including those in regional and local offices, should report to a director of an office for civil rights who, in turn, reports directly to the agency head (i.e., the Secretary or administrator).[35]




	Headquarters
	Civil Rights Office


(a) "Centralized" Model. Example: SBA

	Headquarters
	Civil Rights Office
	I
I	I	I
Division	Division	Division
Civil Rights Office	Civil Rights Office	Civil Rights Office


(b) "Oversight" Model. Examples: HUD, EEOC




	Headquarters
	I
I	I	I
Division	Division	Division
Civil Rights Office	Civil Rights Office	Civil Rights Office


(c) "Decentralized" Model. Example: USDA

The civil rights office must have sufficient authority to enforce civil rights within the agency programs.[36] Here, HUD and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had faults. At HUD, the Commission found that responsibility for administering a civil rights statute was divided among executive staff, with no one below the secretarial level having sole responsibility for implementing the law. The Commission recommended that a single independent administrative agency be formed at an appropriate level to carry out the enforcement responsibilities.[37] At HHS, some operating divisions had minority and women’s health coordinators in an advisory role, but without a budget or status to implement civil rights policies.[38]

Internal civil rights functions should be separated from external civil rights functions and non-Title VI enforcement responsibilities.[39] Several agencies had offices for civil rights with responsibility for the agency’s internal equal employment opportunity programs along with external civil rights functions. The external civil rights responsibilities of some offices included other responsibilities along with the Title VI requirements to ensure that funding recipients comply with civil rights laws. Agencies in which the Commission recommended that separate offices be established for Title VI enforcement included USDA, HUD, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), DOT, and HHS operating divisions.[40] Similarly, the Commission recommended that staff assigned to external civil rights functions be full time and specialized in that area.[41]

Other elements for fostering civil rights enforcement stressed the importance of coordination between the primary civil rights office and program offices and the organizational and managerial links that primary civil rights offices must have with regional and field offices.[42] For example, recommendations stated that for administrations or operating divisions to carry out external civil rights responsibilities, the regional staff and structure must be in place, with channels of regular communication and interaction with headquarters staff.[43] HHS needed improvement in the communication between its headquarters and regional staff.[44]

The Commission’s recommendations about the link between offices that carry out civil rights enforcement activities revealed a preference for the “oversight” and “centralized” models over a decentralized enforcement system. Some agencies had decentralized civil rights efforts by assigning enforcement responsibilities to programmatic staff in an effort to fully integrate civil rights enforcement into all parts of the agency. Although the Commission often commended such strategies as an effective means of overcoming limited resources, it recommended that an office of civil rights be established, independent of, and in a “watchdog” capacity over, other offices. This office should oversee, monitor, and coordinate civil rights enforcement and should have a separate unit to develop and disseminate policy and provide programmatic guidance.[45] The Commission further recommended that “watchdog” offices delegate civil rights responsibilities and hold others accountable for performing the delegated civil rights activities.

In a number of instances, the Commission recommended that an agency consider centralizing its external civil rights activities, particularly where the links among offices were ineffective.[46] For example, the Commission suggested that HUD consider centralizing field and regional staff to establish more direct reporting to headquarters and better oversight and monitoring of the field and regional staff responsible for Title VI enforcement.[47] DOT needed funding to consolidate its external civil rights activities into a headquarters office that would coordinate and oversee regional offices’ activities.[48] Perhaps most important of all, the Commission asked agencies to evaluate whether their organizational structures were hampering their ability to enforce civil rights.[49]

The primary civil rights office should have units devoted exclusively to certain enforcement activities. Policy development was the activity most often named as deserving exclusive staff. Other activities named included enforcement planning; quality assurance; compliance; litigation; public education and outreach; federal, state, and local government coordination; analysis; and systems services.[50]

The Commission recommended a number of actions that might flow from having established the authority and lines of communication for civil rights offices, such as receiving a priority response to the need for resources. For example, in one instance the Commission recommended that the director of the office of civil rights be actively involved in the budget process in order to secure more funds for civil rights enforcement.[51]

The Commission’s recommendations addressed concerns about oversight and accountability of the civil rights enforcement programs at many levels. These were (1) the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) oversight responsibilities for the Title VI enforcement of all other federal agencies; (2) intradepartmental allocation of civil rights responsibilities from headquarters to operating divisions or administrations and to regional or field offices; (3) departmental responsibilities with respect to contracting organizations such as agencies under the Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAPs), Federal Employment Practice Agencies (FEPAs), and Tribal Employment Rights Organizations (TEROs); and (4) agencies’ promulgation of Title VI enforcement among federal funding recipients with subrecipients, particularly states.

DOJ’s Coordination and Review Section (CORS) of the Department’s Civil Rights Division oversees the Title VI enforcement of all federal agencies. To strengthen oversight, the Commission recommended that CORS, first, must enforce coordination regulations requiring that federal agencies prepare annual Title VI enforcement plans. The unit should define procedures for developing enforcement plans.[52] Second, CORS must ensure that all agencies submit the required civil rights implementation plans and that the plans conform to DOJ’s “Guidelines on Agency Implementation Plans.” Any plans that do not meet minimum standards should be returned to the agencies for revision.[53] Third, DOJ/CORS should hold agencies accountable for the activities promised in their civil rights implementation plans.[54] To ensure that agencies set realistic goals for conducting enforcement activities, CORS should require a demonstration of the relationship between the program expenditures and resources and the enforcement activities accomplished in order to support budget requests for additional resources.[55] CORS should also require justifications or explanations for shortfalls in the completed work relative to that which was planned, and should provide assistance to remedy any agency’s repeated deficiencies.[56]

In addition, DOJ/CORS should reinstate regularly administered agency surveys to oversee Title VI enforcement programs,[57] use on-site reviews of the programs to identify deficiencies, and correct any deficiencies through training and technical assistance.[58] DOJ/CORS should monitor all federal agencies’ delegation agreements and require that the agencies, organizations, or contractors with delegated authority provide information on their civil rights activities to the delegating agency and CORS.[59]

Federal agencies may distribute the responsibilities for civil rights enforcement among various divisions, administrations, or bureaus and among regional, district, or field offices. The agency divisions and regional or field offices may appear at different levels in an agency’s organizational structure. Nonetheless, the Commission directed similar recommendations toward all levels.

The Commission strongly supported the delegation of civil rights enforcement responsibilities to both operational and regional staff.[60] HHS, DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs, DOI, and EPA were agencies to which the Commission recommended delegation of responsibility or improvement in the existing method of delegation.

The Commission made many recommendations for how the responsibilities for civil rights enforcement should be delegated. First, departments that delegate civil rights responsibilities must clearly define the roles of the civil rights office and the units to which responsibilities are delegated.[61] Furthermore, the delegation should occur in a formal agreement, regulation, or internal order supported by the Department’s Secretary or other agency head.[62] Second, an agency should institute an oversight mechanism to ensure that the divisions with delegated authority fulfill their civil rights enforcement responsibilities.[63] For example, to ensure close supervision and implementation of direction from headquarters’ civil rights offices, staff, including area or regional directors, should be held accountable for the civil rights compliance and enforcement activities that are performed.[64]

The Commission also specified what role the headquarters unit with oversight responsibilities should have. The overseeing office should:

The Commission further recommended that the headquarters office with oversight responsibilities have units charged with carrying out these functions. Thus, the office should have units for planning, evaluation, policy development, and data collection.[67] In one instance, the Commission suggested forming a review team to examine the agency’s civil rights enforcement activities, examine and determine appropriate staffing levels in each enforcement component, and monitor the quality of compliance activities.[68]

The Commission also provided the model specifications for nature and content of the evaluations any office with oversight responsibilities should conduct. Offices with oversight responsibilities should conduct both document reviews (for example, of any self-assessments of civil rights enforcement) and site visits. During site visits, staff should examine complaint intake procedures and files of complaints and compliance reviews, evaluate data collection, and interview staff, program beneficiaries, and people from affected communities.[69] For complaint processing, headquarters civil rights offices should conduct systematic quality assurance reviews of letters of finding and other case closure documents to ensure sound investigations and findings.[70] Evaluations of complaint processing or compliance review systems should result in written reports with findings and recommendations for improving the programs.[71]

Site visits were a key part of monitoring programs. The Commission noted that the functions of district offices must be monitored and evaluated through routine visits.[72] Furthermore, such visits should ensure that regional, field, or district offices have consistency in their available resources and procedures for civil rights enforcement.[73]

Some federal agencies carry out part of their civil rights enforcement activities through contractual arrangements with other organizations. These include EEOC and HUD, which use state or local human rights organizations to investigate complaints of discrimination. Some of these organizations are known as Federal Employment Practice Agencies (FEPAs), substantially equivalent agencies under the Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAPs), and Tribal Employment Rights Organizations (TEROs). In addition, DOT’s Federal Transit Authority (FTA) was in the early stages of acquiring a contractor to perform Title VI compliance reviews of funding recipients.

In 1996, with DOT/FTA poised to establish a contractual arrangement for carrying out civil rights enforcement, the Commission recommended that the operating administration select its contractor with care, closely review and evaluate any procedural manuals the contractor prepares, closely monitor the contractor’s performance of on-site compliance reviews, and have federal staff accompany the contractor on several reviews.[74] This recommendation partly reflects DOT/FTA’s early stage of implementing the contractual arrangement.

EEOC and HUD had well-established contractual arrangements for civil rights enforcement with existing procedural guidance.[75] Thus, the Commission recommended more monitoring of the contractors. For EEOC, the Commission suggested conducting more frequent on-site visits to promote a greater exchange of information with the FEPAs, and providing larger travel budgets to district offices that have broad geographical oversight responsibilities to facilitate more frequent visits to the FEPAs.[76] For HUD, the Commission suggested a cost analysis of state and local agencies’ complaint processing in order to identify ways to save funds.[77] In general, procedures must be established to ensure that different contractors handle cases or charges consistently.[78]

Oversight of Title VI Enforcement Among Subrecipients, Particularly by States

In studies over the past decade, the Commission concluded that civil rights enforcement was weak in oversight of state recipients. States often receive block grants that are then disbursed to subrecipients. DOEd and DOT and many of its operating administrations were remiss in the oversight of state recipients. The Federal Highway Administration (DOT/FHWA) was an exception and had an enforcement program that could serve as a model for other parts of DOT.[79]

To ensure that states operating block grant programs comply with Title VI, the Commission’s recommendations asked the agency or operational division to:

Commission recommendations directed the departments as well as their operating divisions and regional offices to take responsibility for ensuring that periodic on-site reviews are conducted and to provide technical assistance to states so that civil rights provisions are implemented in recipients’ programs. However, the task of performing on-site reviews was to be delegated. The Commission suggested to one agency that it delegate on-site investigations of subrecipients to states and strengthen requirements for states’ methods of administration and technical assistance so that they can be monitored.[89] Elsewhere, the Commission directed the Department or headquarters office to require its operating divisions (e.g., DOT’s operating administrations) to perform on-site reviews of states and other recipients.[90] At the same time, in conducting oversight and monitoring reviews of its operating divisions, a federal agency should monitor the Title VI activities of state recipients, visit and evaluate state recipients’ Title VI programs, provide any necessary technical assistance, and ensure that the operating units take steps to correct any deficiencies in states’ compliance.[91] Thus, all recipients and subrecipients should receive periodic on-site reviews, but not necessarily by headquarters staff.

The Commission, thus, charges states with responsibility for overseeing the civil rights compliance of their subrecipients. It suggested, first, that the federal government, states, and state subrecipients work together to ensure that civil rights are protected. Second, states, in turn, must establish quality assurance measures to ensure that minorities and women benefit equally from state recipients’ programs.[92]

The Commission gave examples of ways states could meet their responsibilities. First, better coordination among federal agencies, states, and state recipients may occur if, as a requirement of receiving funds, the federal agency required all recipients to designate a civil rights coordinator. The federal agency could train, certify, and periodically recertify the recipients’ coordinators. The Commission suggested that the federal agency could designate the civil rights responsibilities for the coordinators, which would include ensuring that the recipients’ employees are knowledgeable of applicable civil rights laws.[93]

Two general themes on planning permeate the Commission’s Title VI report, among other reports. The first establishes that planning documents must be developed and specifies appropriate civil rights content to be contained in them. The second sets forth that a management information system must be developed or used to support budget requests and other planning.

These themes were expressed in Commission recommendations referencing various types of planning documents. They included (1) strategic plans that all agencies are required to develop in response to the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA);[94] (2) civil rights enforcement plans that every agency should have; (3) the civil rights implementation plans that DOJ requires when overseeing Title VI enforcement; and (4) work plans that the Commission suggested should be used to link the workload to staff and budget resources.

The Commission specified qualities that all planning documents should have, whether they are strategic plans, civil rights implementation plans, or work plans. The qualities include (1) specific short-term goals and long-term objectives, (2) timeframes for meeting goals and objectives, and (3) consideration of both available and projected resources and budget constraints. In addition, planning documents should be regularly re-evaluated and updated to reflect changes in responsibilities. The Commission suggested this updating should occur every three or six months.[95]

Commission recommendations for strategic plans emerged in reports published later in the decade, following the implementation of GPRA. Notably, GPRA requires that federal agencies develop strategic plans defining goals and objectives. The need for each agency to have civil rights goals and objectives was not articulated in the law. Thus, the Commission recommended that agencies include civil rights goals and objectives in their strategic planning. This recommendation was directed to DOEd and HHS.[96]

The Commission also asked that agencies integrate civil rights planning with other planning procedures. The agency’s overall management and strategic planning processes should be related to the civil rights enforcement plan, the DOJ-required civil rights implementation plan, and the work plan for civil rights enforcement.[97]

Finally, because GPRA requires agencies to establish performance measures to track progress in reaching the plan’s goals, the Commission asked that agencies determine the best measures of civil rights outcomes. For example, the Commission suggested that indicators of completed work, such as the number of Title VI compliance reviews, might not be the best measures of progress in eliminating discrimination. A better measure would be the diversity of a recipient’s program beneficiaries, which the recipient should be required to report.[98]

The Commission advocated that agencies develop comprehensive civil rights enforcement plans.[99] The civil rights implementation plans that the Department of Justice requires, discussed in more detail below, concern Title VI and therefore cover only a part of the civil rights responsibilities that many agencies have. The Commission identified numerous desirable qualities for such plans. Comprehensive civil rights enforcement plans should:

The Commission directed recommendations for developing civil rights enforcement plans generally to all federal agencies. Among those singled out for such recommendations were USDA’s Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), DOEd, and DOJ. In some instances, the Commission recommended that agencies establish specific priority civil rights issues. For example, it asked DOJ to plan strategies and goals to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities[110] and DOEd to create a plan to address the unique challenges of children with disabilities and with limited English proficiency.[111]

Two agencies—EEOC and HHS—had regional or local civil rights enforcement plans that needed improvement. The Commission recommended that these plans be developed from a comprehensive headquarters plan. Furthermore, a headquarters office should assist regional and local offices in developing their enforcement plans to ensure uniform format and effectiveness of those plans. The district and regional office plans should contain measurable goals and objectives that headquarters can use to evaluate success in achieving the goals and objectives.[112]

Commission recommendations for planning civil rights enforcement urged the following: the budget and resources must be tied to the strategic plan;[113] monies must be earmarked separately for different statutory authorities (i.e., external vs. internal, or Title VI vs. Title IX enforcement) or enforcement activities (e.g., technical assistance and outreach);[114] the funds and staff needed for civil rights enforcement must be realistically assessed;[115] and requests for additional resources must be justified with anticipated increases in enforcement activities or workload.[116] The Commission further suggested a need for studies of effective allocation of budget and staff resources.[117]

Strategic planning and budget studies should also be used to find ways to streamline the civil rights enforcement program.[118] As ways of making civil rights enforcement more effective the Commission suggested that agencies consider (1) increasing education and outreach to secure voluntary compliance with civil rights laws and enhance the public’s knowledge of how to safeguard its rights,[119] (2) organizing offices on programmatic lines with specialized staff who serve as subject-matter experts or issue coordinators,[120] and (3) promoting information-sharing projects among agency components and state and local recipients.[121]

For the required Title VI civil rights implementation plans, the Commission recommended that federal agencies develop these plans in conformance with Department of Justice guidelines. The agencies should describe more fully the structure of civil rights enforcement in their plans, specifying the scope, organization, budget, staffing, and the extent they conduct various civil rights activities. The implementation plan should include the qualities mentioned earlier—precise civil rights goals and objectives and timeframes for accomplishing them. The goals and objectives should be based on realistic assessment of resources—budget and staff—available for civil rights enforcement. Finally, the implementation plan should be used as a management tool. It should be updated quarterly and include a report of program accomplishments and progress made toward each of the goals and objectives.[122] And, in addition to these qualities, the Commission suggested that, with respect to Title VI civil rights enforcement, planning documents should (1) consider increases in workload, such as the expected numbers of civil rights complaints; and (2) apply civil rights priorities and plans to (a) each type of funding program administered and (b) the particular enforcement mechanism for block grant and continuing state programs.[123]

As suggested by the recommendation to “apply civil rights priorities and plans to each type of funding program administered,” the Commission asked that planning documents fully integrate civil rights enforcement into all aspects of the agency.[124] The Commission explained that priority civil rights issues should be identified through input from staff in operating divisions and civil rights advocacy groups and community organizations.[125] The Commission further stipulated that with some agencies, such as HHS with its numerous operating divisions, the Secretary must promote cohesiveness among its many and varied offices and components, and require them to work together with an office of civil rights to show the relationship between the agency’s civil rights enforcement and its initiatives and strategic goals, and to ensure that civil rights concerns are comprehensively and uniformly integrated among all agency initiatives and strategic objectives.[126] Because of the need for such coordination and integration, the Commission recommended that all departments and agencies form a division within the primary civil rights office that is exclusively dedicated to strategic planning of the agency’s enforcement efforts.[127]

The Commission directed recommendations to develop work plans to a number of agencies. Resources are often shifted between competing civil rights responsibilities without formal accountability to statutory obligations. This concern arose with DOJ’s Civil Rights Division (CRD) and its Coordination and Review Section (CORS), which has oversight for federal agencies with civil rights enforcement responsibilities, for example. The Commission asked CRD to create a formal planning process detailing the activities of each section and their relationship to the mission and goals of the Division; to require each section to prepare a section work plan; to review the section work plans; and to submit a management plan to DOJ for review.[128]

Federal agencies should develop and implement management information systems (MIS) to support strategic planning. The Commission suggested such systems should track expenditures and workload for various civil rights statutes and activities, such as compliance reviews, complaint processing, and technical assistance and outreach. The MIS should be used to prepare annual civil rights enforcement plans that have goals and objectives in each program area and that assign specific resources to accomplish them. Staff should use the MIS to analyze and/or change the allocation of resources, to prepare budget submissions, and to justify requests for additional resources.[129]

At the time of these reports, all but DOEd were in the early stages of developing or implementing such systems. DOEd had an information management system in place that the Commission recommended be expanded to track resources devoted to civil rights activities such as pre-award reviews, post-award reviews, and data collection and analysis.[130] The Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), a USDA component that provides supervised credit assistance through loan and grant programs to rural residents, had a separate budget allotment for Title VI enforcement, and thus was able to track Title VI expenditures separately from expenditures on other civil rights activities. Still, the annual Title VI enforcement plan did not contain goals and objectives based on the work to be accomplished and the resources available for Title VI activities, and the Commission recommended that it should. Furthermore, the FmHA plan should have specified which offices and which staff were responsible for meeting civil rights goals and objectives.[131] In short, FmHA should use its information system to demonstrate that its budget is not sufficient to enforce Title VI and other civil rights statutes effectively, the Commission said.[132]

Justifying requests for additional resources for civil rights enforcement activities was a key reason, but not the only one, for having a well-developed information database. Other recommendations directed agencies to develop features of their databases to monitor the quality of their enforcement efforts and to aid in identifying civil rights noncompliance. Recommendations addressed the databases’ ability to track and analyze trends with complaints,[133] to identify investigations of complaints ended through alternative dispute resolution,[134] to measure the amounts and types of outreach and technical assistance,[135] and to better identify the sources of funding for recipients and subrecipients of block grants.[136] The Commission was also concerned about the quality of the database system. Agencies must have a quality control system to ensure that data entered are complete and accurate.[137]

DISSEMINATION OF POLICY THROUGH GUIDANCE, REGULATIONS, TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE, EDUCATION, OUTREACH, AND PUBLICITY

The Commission issued numerous recommendations throughout the past decade concerning the dissemination or publicity of information about civil rights, to agencies enforcing civil rights, potential violators of civil rights laws, and victims of discrimination. Depending on the audience, dissemination can be accomplished through policy guidance and regulations; technical assistance intended to bring about compliance; education and outreach to potential victims, violators, and the public; and gen